Murray Cruises to First-Round U.S. Open Win After Three-Day Wait

Tennis player Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland returns the ball to Maria-Teresa Torro-Flor of Spain during their U.S. Open women's singles match in New York, August 28, 2013. Photographer: Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images

Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Andy Murray waited three days to
open defense of his title at the U.S. Open tennis championship.
He didn’t let a few extra hours’ delay affect his performance.

Murray moved into the second round with a 6-2, 6-4, 6-3
victory against Michael Llodra of France last night at the
National Tennis Center in New York, where his opener started at
almost 10 p.m. local time because of rain delays. Nobody at the
season’s final Grand Slam tournament waited longer to play a
first-round match than Murray and Llodra.

“Playing at that time for your first round is not ideal,”
Murray said in a news conference. “You just want to get on the
court and play. Whether it’s Arthur Ashe Stadium or court 15, it
doesn’t really matter.”

Two-time champion Venus Williams lost in the second round
at the U.S. Open for the third straight year, while younger
sister and defending champion Serena Williams had her match
pushed back to today because of rain showers that canceled four
afternoon women’s singles matches yesterday.

Murray finally took the court in the main stadium at 9:55
p.m., the third-latest start for a U.S. Open night session,
according to the U.S. Tennis Association. The latest for the
tournament took place in 2009, when James Blake and Tommy
Robredo opened night play on Ashe at 10:25 p.m.

Blake’s Exit

Blake, 33, had his tennis career come to an end early this
morning with a five-set loss to Ivo Karlovic of Croatia in which
he blew a two-set lead. Karlovic won the fifth-set tiebreaker
7-2 against Blake, who said earlier this week that he’d be
retiring after the U.S. Open.

After the match, Blake thanked those fans who stayed until
after midnight in Louis Armstrong Stadium and cheered him on
with chants of “Let’s go, James!”

“It’s hitting me now that I’ll never have this again in my
life,” Blake said in an on-court interview. “Everything I did,
every bit of hard work was worth it. I have had so many highs
and lows in front of you, it’ll never be forgotten.”

Second-seeded Rafael Nadal of Spain, No. 4 David Ferrer of
Spain and No. 7 Roger Federer of Switzerland are scheduled to
play second-round matches today. In addition to Serena Williams,
who meets Galina Voskoboeva of Kazakhstan in the second round
this afternoon in Ashe, other seeded women in action today
include No. 4 Sara Errani of Italy, No. 6 Caroline Wozniacki of
Denmark and No. 9 Jelena Jankovic of Serbia.

Williams Ousted

Venus Williams lost 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (7-5) to Zheng Jie of
China in a match that took three hours and two minutes, tied for
the fifth-longest women’s match at the U.S. Open since records
started being kept in 1970. Tied at 5-5 in the final-set
tiebreaker, Williams hit a shot into the net and then sent a
backhand wide to end it.

“Unfortunately I didn’t play consistently enough,”
Williams said. “I just dug myself into so many holes the whole
match. I just fought as hard as I could to get out of them, but
sometimes it wasn’t enough.”

The 56th-ranked Zheng advances to face No. 18 seed Carla
Suarez Navarro of Spain, who beat American qualifier Coco
Vandeweghe 6-3, 6-4. Venus Williams wasn’t seeded this year
after falling to No. 60 in the world rankings.

Fifteenth-seeded Sloane Stephens of the U.S. won the final
Day 3 match, rolling to a 6-1, 6-1 rout of Urszula Radwanska of
Poland in 58 minutes after starting at 11:53 p.m. It was the
second-latest for a U.S. Open match, behind only a midnight
start time for a 1987 first-round meeting between Gabriela
Sabatini and Beverly Bowes, according to the USTA.

Li Advances

Li Na played the first match in Arthur Ashe Stadium
yesterday before the first rain delay, beating Sofia Arvidsson
of Sweden 6-2, 6-2. Li, 31, is the 2011 French Open winner who’s
seeded fifth in the women’s draw.

Men’s No. 9 Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland was a
straight-set winner against Radek Stepanek of the Czech
Republic, while No. 16 Fabio Fognini of Italy and No. 24 Benoit
Paire of France both lost their opening matches. Fognini was
beaten by Rajeev Ram of the U.S. 6-1, 6-2, 6-2, while Paire lost
to Russia’s Alex Bogomolov Jr. 7-5 in a fifth-set tiebreaker.

Kevin Anderson, the men’s No. 17 seed from South Africa,
moved into the second round with a four-set win against Daniel
Brands of Germany, while No. 21 Mikhail Youzhny of Russia was a
straight-set winner against Nicolas Mahut of France.